Philadelphia's Loss

At rehearsal one day last week Philadelphia Orchestramen wondered if Leopold Stokowski were ill. His mood was strangely nostalgic. Suddenly he interrupted the players, thanked them for helping him forget his many worldly troubles. That afternoon the meeting of the orchestra board was no scrappier than usual and directors went home with easy minds. But next morning when they picked up their newspapers, they read that Leopold Stokowski had resigned as conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

All Philadelphia was shocked. Stokowski had been there for 22 years. He had given Philadelphia its musical name and always something to talk about. For many of his subscribers he had been too full of antics. Many were resentful when he arrogantly scolded them for applauding, arriving late or failing to appreciate some ultra-modern screeching. But Stokowski was not out for publicity when he made his peerless transcriptions of Bach. For years he presented them anonymously. He took infinite pains with the Youth Concerts and gave his services. No one was surprised when he received the first Philadelphia Award (a medal and $10,000), for outstanding civic service.

The reasons which Stokowski gave for his resignation were "deep-lying differences" with the board and its failure to appoint a suitable successor to Manager Arthur Judson. Stokowski's contract for this season expires Dec. 26. In his open letter to the board he said: "You have not been able to find and engage an executive director that is acceptable to the majority of you and to me, and so I have not been able to make the great number of detailed arrangements that would be absolutely essential for the coming season if it were to be carried out as I have conceived it."

No mention was made of Esther Everett Lape, new assistant to Curtis Bok, the Orchestra's president (TIME, Oct. 29).

But everyone knew that Miss Lape was Stokowski's choice for manager. Nor did the letter refer to the board's decision to offer the job to Benjamin ("Pep") Ludlow, a Philadelphia lawyer better acquainted with welfare work than with music. The end of Stokowski's statement was suitably regretful: "I am sad at the thought that I must now leave the Orchestra that I have worked so hard to help build up. ... I wish to pass over in silence and forget our deep-lying differences of opinion and remember "only the beauty and inspiration of the music we have made. I write this with pain in my heart."

Early in January Stokowski will take his wife (spectacular Johnson & Johnson heiress) and his two daughters on a trip to the Orient where he intends to study Japanese and Chinese music. But few believed last week that he had definitely retired from the U. S. musical scene. Stokowski at 52 is as ambitious and hard-working as he was in his twenties when he played the organ in St. Bartholomew's Church in Manhattan, saved his money so that he could hire orchestras abroad and start building up his fame as a conductor.

Thanks to Stokowski Philadelphia has had one of the world's great orchestras. And Philadelphians, knowing it, forgot last week that they had laughed at his publicity stunts, thought of him only as a fine musician who had always given them fine concerts. Hundreds of subscribers humbly petitioned him to change his mind, while his friend Curtis Bok announced that he had a plan which might ultimately solve the difficulties.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.